core stability

Here’s why your six pack won’t make you a better runner. 

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Most core exercises are a waste of time. They will not make you a better athlete. In fact, they could be slowing you down and creating injuries. 

Why? Because for athletic performance in any discipline, one of the most important functions is the ability to connect your upper and lower body effectively and efficiently without shortening your front. 

The function of the abdominal muscles is to link upper and lower body, provide stability to the lumbar spine and pull the rib cage down during certain motions. 

A short anterior (front) from too many crunches or planks will reduce your hip mobility, create an unwanted curve in your back and reduce the power you can produce. 

To overcome this, by all means do your stability and integration work, preferably under professional guidance to give dynamic feedback but then lengthen and mobilise the front again (for example cobra stretch or warrior poses if you have no spinal or other issues). 

By having a long and fluid front, to work with a strong back, you’ll be closer to optimising your performance and breaking that PB. 
And of course, if in doubt, seek guidance from an experienced professional. 

A brief thought on running mechanics and gait

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It is generally thought that there are 4 main phases to the gait cycle when running:

Inital strike, stance, take off and forward swing.

Breaking this down into 2 separate sections, we can firstly look at the strike and stance phases. As the foot makes contact with the ground and rectus femoris (one of the quadriceps group of thigh muscles) proactively fires. As the foot touches the ground, the subtalar joint inverts or everts, the midfoot abducts or adducts and the forefoot plantarflexes or dorsiflexes. All these subtle movements combine to allow a small amount of pronation to occur, maximising the foots ability to dissipate shock.From this, we can see that a tight foot that underpronates limits this ability, which may lead to achillies problems, calf strains, lateral knee pain and illiotibial band issues. Conversely, overpronation can lead to tibial strain, anterior calf injuries and medial knee pain, due to the medial rotation occurring in the tibia. 

Swing phase happens at the same time on the opposite leg. The pelvis rotates forwards, with hip flexion initiated by the iliospoas. The Hamstrings start to lengthen, limiting the extension in the lower leg, caused by the quadriceps.The lower leg decends, hitting the surface as the body accelerates, ideally creating a vertical line between head and toe on impact.

During both phases, the core provides stability for the upper body, allowing the forces to be shared and transferred correctly. As the spine can be considered by some researchers a store and transfer for the energy contained within the running motion, core integration is important and if not present, an indicator and predisposition of other issues that need to be addressed.